Moonlight Melody
by calliebelle
Summary: Walking down a New Orleans street, Edward is lured in by a dark melody... but who is this Lestat, and why does he seem to know Carlisle? And what does he want with Alice and Bella?
1. Chapter 1

"Carlisle," I asked, sliding into his study. I knocked once and he told me to enter without speaking a word. "Who is Lestat?"

He brought his hands together, resting his fingers against his forehead.

"So, you have met Lestat…" Carlisle said aloud.

"In New Orleans," I said, taking a step forward. "I heard him playing."

I was walking down a shady street in the Garden District when I heard it… the throbbing, frantic pace as fingers flew across the strings… it was Mozart. It was furious, melodic, perfect.

Only a vampire could play like that. Precise. Echoing. Dripping with emotion, longing, regret. He reeled me in. I turned down a cobbled walkway, around the porch of a dimly lit white house, flocked with hydrangeas. He had Esme's flair for landscaping.

And then I saw him. His shaggy blonde hair thrashed as his head moved with the violin. His fingers flew along the frets, striking even faster than my own could. And his eyes burned… but green. Deep emerald green as he swayed in time with his song…

I wanted to play with him.

"Hello…" I said, feeling slightly ashamed of my human greeting. "I couldn't help myself…" I cocked my head and gave him a crooked smile.

The blonde vampire raised an eyebrow at me, tossing his hair, and played faster, more ferocious. Even my ears could barely keep pace with his song.

He stopped abruptly. Chuckling before locking his eyes with my own.

"I am Lestat," he said. "You must belong to Carlisle…"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He gestured toward a piano beyond the threshold of the patio, inside the house. "Sit, Edward," the stranger said.

I pulled the bench from the piano and rested at its center. I made a show of flexing my vampire knuckles, an obvious inanity for us both. He blinked, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. I was cautious. He knew more than he should. More than I was comfortable with.

But I couldn't keep my fingers from its keys. I felt my muscles rippling with the urgency of the music that Lestat suddenly ripped from the violin.

We played in tandem, music I had never even imagined – succulent harmony. The moon moved across the sky as we played.

Abruptly at the end of a song, I stood.

"Thank you," I said to the man, noticing for the first time he was dressed in dark leather pants and a sheer, short-sleeved shirt – as if he were a rock star. "I should be getting home to my wife."

I thought of Bella's soft, chestnut waves. I would have blushed if I could. I felt scrutinized under his gaze. Why did I care what he thought of me?

"Nonsense," Lestat sneered. "Your human is a delight, I'm sure. But you and I... How often do vampires have a lust for performance before blood?"

I stared at him dumbfounded… He was obviously an ancient. His hair glittered like gold. His skin glistened like marble. He breathed music. But something about him seemed older than even the Volturi.

Music lust. Blood was an afterthought.

Who was this vampire? Why did he know me? How did he know Bella was human?

I didn't linger to ask. I turned and walked the way I came, back to the sidewalk, where I finally took a deep breath, inhaling the flowers that hung heavy in the humid New Orleans air. When I got back to the house where Bella slept, I packed our things. I told her we were leaving when she woke, and she didn't question why. Bella sometimes knew what I needed without me having to explain. I sighed in her arms.

And we returned to the gray damp of Washington. Home. Where I could ask Carlisle about the vampire… Lestat.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

"_So, you have met Lestat…" Carlisle said aloud. _

"_In New Orleans," I said, taking a step forward. "I heard him playing."_

He stood for what seemed like an eternity, even to a vampire, stone still. Carlisle didn't breathe, lost in an internal debate on what to tell me. I didn't breathe because I couldn't. _He knew him… he has hidden him from me… _

Carlisle's mouth broke into a lopsided smirk. His head shook, so subtly that a human would have missed it. I saw it. He was not going to tell me the whole truth.

"Carlisle…" I whispered. "How does Lestat know my name?"

He turned to me, golden eyes offering a weak apology.

"Lestat is…" his shoulders fell, "an old friend." He offered no more.

I slumped onto the sofa opposite Carlisle's desk, as if he were my shrink. "Who is he, Dad?"

Carlisle folded his hands across his waist and sat in his chair. He swiveled to face me, his pale gold hair glowing in the lamplight.

"He was… his clothing was… fashionable. But not in our way. He wasn't blending in. He stands out, Carlisle. How have you kept him from me?"

"Son," he said, closing his eyes. "Lestat is… He is the only creature I have known who can surpass you in his passion for music. His skill for fitting in with them. And his delight in being a vampire."

I raised my eyebrow in question.

"He has never approved of my vegetarian lifestyle," Carlisle chuckled. "Lestat drank from the mother of us all. He cannot fathom being anything but vampire. He cannot relate to them anymore, yet he worships their adoration of him. Surely you have heard their music."

_How could that have slipped past me. Of course. Nosferatu was huge in Europe and developing a following in the States. Lestat. He wasn't simply a human with good makeup and a good sound system. God I hated those pretentious humans who thought they were dabbling in the occult… Lestat. Lestat wasn't human. How had I not seen it?_

_He played like lightening._

"I met him a decade after I had been changed, in Paris," Carlisle whispered. "He was a country nobleman who had been bitten by an older Parisian aristocrat while visiting the King. Marcus left him. Much like Alice had been abandoned, I suppose…" his voice faltered for a moment.

"I had recently arrived on the continent and had firmly established my diet, at that point. But I sought light, music and knowledge. I was at a salon one night when Lestat arrived, throwing open the doors and tossing aside the corpse of a prostitute.

"Our hostess was enthralled. Paris at the time was a city in love with the idea of its New Orleans voodoo-laced colony and well, Lestat was a consummate showman," Carlisle smirked again, letting himself indulge in a silent memory as I surveyed his face.

"She was delighted he had arrived, and I had not anticipated seeing another of our kind so soon, and so… flamboyantly a vampire. But. But he was so successful because they thought it was an act. He was the worst stereotype of a vampire. I was both enthralled and appalled as he dropped her body in the hall as he threw open the salon doors."

I shivered at Carlisle's obvious admiration of the older vampire.

"How old is Lestat?" I asked.

"He is not much older than I am," Carlisle said. "But we are very different men…"

I couldn't suppress my snort. "Oh, really?"

"Edward," Carlisle began, "the things Lestat has done would make even your skin crawl, and you left us for long enough to know about human death. He thinks me and our lifestyle to be entirely ridiculous.

"But despite our differences," Carlisle sat back against the smooth brown leather of his chair. "We spent many years together, drinking in Paris. Him a little more literally than myself…"

I didn't know what to think, remembering the hypnotic blonde vampire who had played exactly the right thing to draw me in. I knew I would return to him if I heard it again.

"How does he know _me_, Carlisle?" I asked.

"He has visited us, son," Carlisle said, turning to look out the western window. "Always hidden, because I didn't want his charisma to jeopardize our diet… but it seems he was just biding his time."


	3. Chapter 3

"_How does he know me, Carlisle?" I asked._

"_He has visited us, son," Carlisle said, turning to look out the western window. "Always hidden, because I didn't want his charisma to jeopardize our diet… but it seems he was just biding his time."_

I heard Carlisle sigh. I shuddered, despite myself.

"He came to see _me_." I said. It wasn't a question. Carlisle nodded at the moon.

"Yes," he closed his eyes. "It seems he finally has."

"I should go to him first," I said, gliding to my feet faster than human eyes could have seen. I dragged my fingers through my tangled, damp hair. _Damned New Orleans heat…_ "You don't have to deal with him."

Carlisle chuckled. "Lestat is no threat to me, Edward. But be careful. Listen to Alice. And try to minimize his contact with Bella. She's extraordinary, but he is a… let's just say he is a master of seduction. Not sexually…"

I cringed, but he continued.

"But he has a way of convincing others that what he thinks is the only conclusion one could come to… that his thinking is flawless. And well. Let's just say around Lestat, all ways are Lestat's ways. Don't cross him, Edward."

I nodded and turned back into the garden. Carlisle's words had shaken me. He spoke about this Lestat, this flamboyant vampire cum rock star as if he could turn the very tides, but I had seen Carlisle bewitched by character before. I heard him talk of his early admiration for Aro, before experience exposed his penchant for treachery, for needless violence. Carlisle loved big personalities. Perhaps that explained why he loved Rosalie, Emmett and Alice. Why he loved me. Esme, Jasper and Bella were more nuanced, subtle. I was an anxiety train wreck, convinced that everything would end with a wrong wind. Bella calls me her delicate flower. It makes me cringe, but she's right.

What the hell did Lestat want with me?

Carlisle told me Lestat was a night owl, reveling in the Bram Stoker fantasy of the vampire who sizzled into ash in sunlight, and while I found our sparkles exasperating, I thought Lestat's melodrama was a bit over the top. Carlisle said he lay during the day in a coffin, because he found it amusing. Having drunk from Akasha, his skin was still alabaster, but didn't glint in the sun. He was one of the few immune to daylight, but I suppose old habits are hard to break. Mine are.

I spent the day inside the house, breathing in the fresh, damp Forks air and playing the songs Bella had inspired in me on my grand piano. She was hunting with Alice, and I played as if it could call her back to me. I loved the way the instrument shifted slightly on the old floor boards when the tempo accelerated. How it seemed to sigh back into place when it slowed. The entire house seemed to sway slightly, in time with my torso, circling, eyes closed, with the rhythm of the song.

_Clap. Clap. Clap.  
_

My eyes flew open and there he stood, leaning against the French door overlooking the forest. Lestat. Forks. _How the hell did he get in here without me smelling him? Hearing him? _

"Lovely tune, Edward," he said, tucking a lock of his wild hair behind his ear. "Really. You have a gift."

I stood, pushing the bench from the piano with such force that it flew across the room and knocked the sofa back a few feet.

Lestat chuckled deep in his throat.

"I didn't mean to alarm you," he said. "But that was mesmerizing. Edward Cullen, the hidden virtuoso."

He stalked from the door to the keyboard, running his fingers along it with enough force to move them them, but not enough to make them sound.

"One of your kind would make a remarkable addition to my entourage…" he cooed, sliding the lid over the keys. In a flash he moved the bench back around me, under the piano, and pushed me onto the black leather sofa. "Tell me, Edward. Tell me about your music…"

If he had asked about whether I'd leave the family, about Bella, about anything else… I might have been able to think before I spoke. But Lestat had a way about him. You wanted to answer him. You wanted to soothe him. God, he was good.

"I'm a vampire. I don't need to breathe. But the music is my breath," I said.

"And her?"

"She is my life. I need them both."

"Good. Good." He laced his fingers behind his back and stood facing me.

"Then you will come with me, my son…" Lestat purred into my ear, sliding his fingers along my jaw as if I were his pet. He turned my face to his and I was again glued to his emerald eyes. Human eyes. No. Not quite human. Too bright. Too green. The color of actual emeralds… a watery, cold green that saw only its prize.

"I prefer to stay here with Carlisle," I said. "With my family."

"I already have them, Edward," Lestat sat and leaned back against the sofa, lacing his fingers behind his head as if he were talking about incoming bad weather.

I stood and hovered over him, unleashing the predator, pinning him to the sofa with my right hand.

His grip on my wrist almost pulverized my vampire bones.

"Didn't Carlisle tell you?" he asked. "I drank from Akasha, young one. You cannot destroy me. You can't even dent my skin, no matter how hard you try. I am as old as the sand, young Edward. Resisting me is of no use to you."

"Where is Bella?" I snarled, bringing my mending wrist to my chest, but I could not hide my panic. "What have you done with my wife?"

"Oh Edward," Lestat sat back, crossing one leather-clad leg over the other. "I'm a predator, but I'm by no means an animal."

_Them… Wait. Who is them?_

"Alice and Bella," he said with a voice as cold as ice. _He could read my mind._

"What would you do to get them back?"

_Anything_, I thought. _Anything..._


End file.
